The Vatican is Anti-Berlusconi!

March 12, 2008 · Filed Under Funny · 4 Comments 

Yep, it’s official, well almost. There have been quite a number of news stories about the new 21st century sins that the dear old Vatican has come up with. And here they are, the sins, that is, in no particular order, at least I don’t believe so:

  1. Environmental pollution - Change you car - or burn in Hell.
  2. Genetic manipulation - Create Chimera and be damned.
  3. Accumulating excessive wealth - Go bankrupt and head for paradise.
  4. Inflicting poverty - Make people poor and end up beneath the floor.
  5. Drug trafficking and consumption - Doing and dealing drugs is bad for your soul.
  6. Morally debatable experiments - Experiment morally, or face the heat.
  7. Violation of fundamental rights of human nature - Act like a devil and meet the Devil personally.

As you can see, sin number three, accumulating excessive wealth, appears to indicate that the Holy See does not see eye to eye with wealth accumulating Mr Berlusconi.

The question is, what with the Italian general elections just round the corner, will the Italian people decide to vote in an excessively rich sinner in the country that is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church?

I can see the new election posters that will surely appear: ‘Don’t Vote for a Sinner’, ‘Do You Want a Sinner as a Leader?’, ‘Sin is Bad - don’t vote for Sinners’. or ‘A Sin A Day, Makes the Voters Go Away.’ ‘Rich People are Sinners, not Leaders.’ et al.

Oddly enough, the Italian media appears to have remained quite quiet about this. I wonder why….

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Milan’s Green Belt

March 5, 2008 · Filed Under Milan · Comment 

I recently read an interesting article in Epolis Milano, one of Milan’s many freebie newspapers, and also one of the better ones, I might add.

This article was about the bods at City Hall who have dreamed up a scheme to cut down the smog levels under which Milan is drowning, despite the recent introduction of the Ecopass car charging system.

Now, you might think that the best way to cut down the pollution levels would be to simply ban all cars from the centre. Although this would be wonderful, it would, understandably, cause quite a few problems, and would not go down at all well with the car dependant Italians who inhabit this bustling city.

So, what can done? Well, apparently greenery and trees act as an effective filter and can help absorb many of the pollutants that are causing one person every 36 hours to head for hospital to have respiratory problems sorted out. So, some 500,000 trees are going to be planted.

Does this mean that Milan will become a forest? Possibly, I suppose. And , in addition to all the trees, the people at the top are planning to increase the proportion of green areas per head of the population to 19 square metres.

Whether these novel solutions will have any effect on reducing the still spiralling pollution levels remains to be seen, but a positive side-effect of the ‘forestation’ of the city will be the creation of a series of ‘green roads’ which will link each of the city’s larger park areas. This sounds very interesting, and, from looking at the illustrative photo in the newspaper, means that it may be possible to literally walk all the way round the city centre using these interconnected green ways.
It would also be nice if they installed cycle ways on the park-links too.

The deadline for this gush of greenery is 2015, which also just happens to be the year in which the Expo will be held in Milan.

Walking tours of Milan, anyone?

I hope this proposal does come to fruition, and actually works.  It sounds like a jolly good pollution solution, if you ask me.

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Milan’s Ecopass Not Working

February 1, 2008 · Filed Under Milan · 2 Comments 

The Milan section of the La Corriere della Sera newspaper is carrying a couple of perturbing articles today, one of which states that the Ecopass anti-pollution traffic charging system does not appear to be having any real effect. Apparently PM10 and the levels of other noxious pollutants are still far too high.

Another article, which is more worrying, especially for those of us with children, is that around 100,000 children in the high risk under 14 group are having pollution related health problems. Admissions to casualty departments in the city triple when pollution levels are high. Not too good. And I am worried about my son, especially as he has a weakness that means that he is more likely to have respiratory system related illnesses.

Solutions? First, and most painful. Extend the Ecopass area outwards. But before this can be done, new car parks need to be built near all metro stations on the periphery of Milan. The land is there, well, at the Famagosta and Cascina Gobba stations there are plots of land that could be turned into car parks, and I know of other areas. And many plots have been vacant for years, and a compulsory purchase system does exist under Italian law.

Even if car parks cannot be built next to metro stations, they could be built just about anywhere and served by shuttle buses taking commuters to nearby metro stations. Reducing taxi fares would also make a difference.

Funding for all these changes could come from the Ecopass revenues and parking charges, plus increased public transport income.

I’m under the impression too that the number of cars within the Ecopass area is increasing, and even if the cars are low pollution models, they are not zero pollution models, hence, most probably the negligible changes in pollution levels.

Come on Moratti, if you have real power, use it. Think of the health system savings and lost productivity due to parents taking their children to the hospital. Not to mention the cost of dealing with long term health problems that all this pollution is bound to be creating.  Asthma, and allergies, all take time and money to treat.

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